A bloody battle that caused a stink
Chauncey Raymond William Adams kept a detailed diary during World War 2. But the pages were left blank for a lifechanging two weeks in November 1941, writes Nicholas Boyack.
When Chauncey Raymond William Adams died in March 2019, just a few days shy of turning 101, he did so with a stink hanging over him.
Stink was the word he used after returning from World War II in 1943, to describe the Battle of Sidi Rezegh.
Chauncey, who in the military was known as George, was always reluctant to talk about
Sidi Rezegh and his diary was left blank for a two-week period in November 1941.
His daughter, Wellingtonian Carolyn Adams, says her father, who after the war became a builder, keen tramper and marathon runner, never talked about those missing two weeks.
It annoyed him that it never got the attention it deserved from historians, especially compared to Passchendaele and Gallipoli (WWI) and battles like Crete and Monte Cassino in WWII. Adams has set out to raise awareness by writing The Stink – a book about her father – and organising a recent commemorative service at the Pukeahu National War Memorial.
The Battle of Sidi Rezegh is part of a relatively unknown campaign fought in Libya by the New Zealand Division and the
Eighth Army, known as Operation Crusader. It was the most costly campaign fought by the Kiwis in the war, with 879 men killed, 1699 wounded, and 2042 taken prisoner – out of a total strength of 20,000.
At one point the New Zealanders were virtually surrounded and had to fight their way out, suffering huge casualties. Two days before Christmas 1941, and back in
Egypt to recover from the fighting, Chauncey wrote to his sister and her husband, Bill Dustin. It was one of the few times he ever hinted at the carnage he had witnessed.
‘‘I suppose that you have heard from home that I am still in one piece, after our recent little show in Libya. Pretty warm going this time.’’
After Sidi Rezegh, Chauncey was in and out of hospital with eye inflammation, before returning to New Zealand and being declared medically unfit.
Adams has used her father’s diary, photographs and beautifully handwritten letters back to his family in Wellington, as well as official histories, to tell the story of his war and the effect it had on him. A witness to some of the fiercest fighting of the war, he never opened up about what he had seen.
Adams recalls on one occasion when watching a documentary about the Battle of Monte Cassino, her father commented that history had overlooked his big battle.
‘‘With reluctance he told me it was called Sidi Rezegh. It was the first time I had ever heard of it,’’ Adams writes in The Stink. The phrase ‘‘The Stink’’ was what he later wrote in his diary to record the battle.
Fortunately, his large collection of letters, the photographs he took with a Box Brownie and his diaries all survived in a cardboard box. The collection, unearthed after his death, provided the base for an interesting account of a battle and a life that was well lived.
Born in England in 1918, his name resulted from a meeting his parents had with a Canadian soldier in WWI. In New Zealand he was known as Snow.
After the war he trained as a carpenter and set up his own business building houses in New Plymouth.
He married Heather Jean Cross in 1947, and using his postwar service payout he built their own home in weekends.
The races, cricket and rugby, and marching to the cenotaph in New Plymouth on Anzac Day were always important to him.
He attended reunions of his former comrades until there was no-one left to organise them. Private Chauncey Raymond William Adams, 3267 A Company 25th Battalion, died in Auckland on March 18, 2019.
The Stink, and other WW2 stories of a Wellington Soldier, by Carolyn Adams, is available by emailing tearopublications@ gmail.com